


Knight in Shining Armor

by Piplup212



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Fantasy, Lesbian Character, Minor Character Death, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 12:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17244551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piplup212/pseuds/Piplup212
Summary: just read it its gay ill fix this later





	Knight in Shining Armor

A carriage slowly rolls into town and attached to it is a cart. Over the cart lays a large piece of canvas, thrown over it in a feeble attempt to cover what it contained. Through the gaps between the boards, arms poked from the sides, falling limp. Two men sit in the front of the cart. On the right, a man grips the reins, leading an old horse. On the left is an armored soldier with a thousand yard stare. He is frozen, clutching a bloodied ornate helmet bearing the image of a maned lioness the bangs up against the metal armor of his uniform bearing the same image. The blood is dried, with marks in it from being removed from someone’s head by hands other than their own.

The cart stops when it reaches the square, and people poke their heads out of their windows and doors. The men on the cart step down, the soldier doing so much slower than the driver. He waits for the soldier to arrive on the other side of the cart, and they grip the cloth. They pull it off, revealing what it carries.  
There are screams. Horrible, grieving screams, as women and children rush out of their homes to mourn their husbands and fathers. Bodies are laid out, each corpse or couple of corpses bearing crests of the same style as the survivor’s, though they show different images.

There are wives and mothers, grieving over the losses of their husbands and sons. There are young boys who have lost their big brothers. There are teenage girls who will have no one to give them away to their true love. 

These are children who will not have fathers.

Through the chaos and pure agony of the crowd, a tiny child of what couldn’t be more than a springs’ age with hair of silken scarlet runs to the cart. She looks up at the soldier and he cries as he lifts her off her feet, fiercely reminding her of how much he loves her. She’s giggling and babbling at him, blissfully ignorant of the hurricane of dark clouds that lay over the town. He holds her close with a death grip, dropping the helmet and letting it clatter off of the step up to the cart and onto the ground.  
A woman with the same hair as the young girl runs up to the corpses being laid out, watching mothers, daughters and sons wail over the corpses of their loved ones. She spots the soldier with her daughter and runs up, joining them in their sobbing. She doesn't know if they're tears of joy or sadness. 

After a moment or two, the soldier sets the girl down on the ground to assist in laying out the corpses. He sees friends, fathers, sons, brothers. He’d held a bond with these men that couldn’t be explained.

Before he can place a hand upon a body, he's hit in the back with a glass bottle, which shatters on impact. He turns around and sees a woman with fire in her eyes. She screams to him of how he was their leader and he should have protected them. Her voice shatters like the glass of her weaponized bottle and her screaming descends into sobs as she collapses to the ground. He walks towards her, placing a gloved hand on her head and kneeling down in front of her. The woman grips his arms, wailing and weakly beating at his armored chest.

He comforts her, speaking to her of the soldiers and their valiant fight. He asks who her husband was, and she tells, allowing him to speak at length about how they fought side by side. After a few minutes, he sees a small boy peek out of a house and run towards them, stopping right behind the woman and staring at the body next to her. He tugs on the woman’s shirt and asks why Papa was asleep on the street, wondering why he wasn’t awake to see them after his really big job he had to do. She grabs the child and holds him close, whispering apologies that he didn’t fully understand the need to accept yet. The armored man stands, returning to the cart to lay out his fellow knights. 

He is the only one left after the battle, and the only knight to attend each and every single fallen soldier’s funerals. He stands by their wives and children as they grieve, inviting them into his home when they needed company or just something good to eat that they wouldn’t have to make themselves. Besides the young boys left behind by their fathers, he’s the only man of the town, and he has to live up to that. He has to be there for them all.

These are children who will have a father.


End file.
